


Exploration

by Tamoline



Category: The Southern Reach Trilogy - Jeff Vandermeer
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 16:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2474048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/pseuds/Tamoline
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grace survives what might be the end of the world or a beginning of a new one. With a little help from her friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Exploration

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Kitty (Tamoline)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tamoline/gifts).



> Spoilers for Annihilation, Authority and Acceptance.
> 
> With many thanks to [Lorraine](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Lorraine) for being a wonderful beta.
> 
> Happy early anniversary present, Kitty.

The regular sound of stones hitting tarmac - skitter, skitter, skitter - acted almost like a soporific to Grace’s nerves as she and Ghost Bird walked along the dusty, cracked road. It was almost as if it acted as a shield from the dangers of Area X - the true dangers, not mere incidental death, but the changes that could come before. Or after. 

The same way that pain had worked for her, these past long three years, sharp splinters of wood under fingernails, just the right amount of jagged glass added to a meal, an arm twisted out of joint, a fractured rib, and around and around again, in an endless cycle.

All healed too quickly, too thoroughly and all to keep the changes at bay.

Grace had seen a rabbit trapped in a tar pit once when she was seven. It had just looked at her with mad, terrified eyes, frozen even as it sank, even as she started finding and placing pieces of wood for it to climb on. Maybe it had already died, maybe it had already exhausted its efforts, or maybe it was just too terrified to take a chance even as she pleaded with it, shouted at it and eventually just cried as it disappeared out of sight.

The changes Area X had wrought in her hadn’t feel like the brightness the biologist had described. They had felt like bubbling black tar, barely trapped within her bones and she would have been damned these last three years before she just sat there frozen, waiting for it to consume her. She had sworn that she would struggle and take any damn branch that was offered her.

And now here she was, walking side by side with Ghost Bird as they walked towards˜ wherever.

Maybe towards Alicia. She'd clung to her picture for so long, used it as a symbol, something to cling to, a reason to hang on every time she had to hurt herself enough to keep the viscous change as deep as possible. 

* * * * *

**Thirteen years ago:**

Grace had been backpacking with friends, trying to cleanse the claustrophobia of Southern Reach from her bones in one of her infrequent holidays. The time away from her then husband didn't hurt either. Alicia had been travelling the same direction with her brother Victor and his children. Maybe it was just the way she reconstructed it in hindsight, but she remembered the world almost seeming to pause as she met this stranger's gorgeous eyes, felt almost like that rabbit must have felt before she managed to look away, her face hot.

Ordinarily, that would've been the end of it, the two groups passing each other as their different walking speeds separated them as surely as it had brought them together, but Josh had turned to Victor and tried to bargain with him for some more water. Beth had shouted that he didn't deserve any more water after having soaked her with his, brandishing her still damp shirt at him, and after a stunned moment, Alicia and the children had started giggling. After that, the two groups had amalgamated, and Josh had finally gotten his water - a little more than he wanted, the next time they reached a rest stop as Beth had bribed the children with candy to fill up their water bottles and soak him.

Alicia, watching the mayhem, had nudged her with her elbow. “I’m glad to see that you’ve got about as much control over your children as my brother has over his,” she had said dryly, her eyes sparkling.

Grace had watched Josh, over a year older than her, swear dramatic vengeance on Beth, and start chasing her around the rest stop. “Not mine, thankfully. I get to give them back at the end of the day. My two would be wearing put upon expressions and trying to distance themselves as much as possible.”

Alicia had given her sidelong look, then offered her hand and introduced herself. After that, despite Grace’s better instincts, they’d spent the rest of the trail together, and Grace had found herself talking to her about... almost anything apart from her job. It had been easier than it had any right to be, When they'd come to the end of the trail, before they went their separate ways, they'd exchanged cellphone numbers.

At the time, Grace had determinedly thought nothing more of it, that this would just be a holiday friendship doomed to fade and be forgotten like every other she'd ever had.

Naturally, it hadn't quite worked that way.

* * * * *

But now, at some point, the idea of actually seeing her again, holding her in her arms, kissing her, had faded as she became more of an abstraction than a person.

The thought that she might actually see Alicia again made something to ripple inside of her, caused her to miss the next throw, and the skitter, skitter, skitter stopped, leaving the sounds of birds and insects to rush in and fill the silence.

Beside her, Ghost Bird stopped and turned to look at her, a question lurking beneath her placid expression.

"I've got to get to Grunsberg," Grace said. "Alicia is waiting for me there." She had to be. Their house had been as far away from Southern Reach - from Area X - as it could practically be. She'd always played Doubting Thomas to Cynthia's conviction that Area X was emanating an invisible radiation that was slowly poisoning everything around it. But just in case, after the divorce, she'd bought a new place as far north as possible.

It had to have been outside the initial expansion radius. Even Cynthia had thought so.

Of course, her faith in Cynthia wasn't what it had been. The wait at first the lighthouse on the mainland and then the one on the island as a last redoubt had seen to that. Not to mention the loss of everyone who had survived those first nightmare days.

Three years of survival, of the endless pain necessary to avoid succumbing to the change bubbling within her, had ground her down to just the instinct to survive, to keep putting one metaphorical foot in front of the other and keep moving, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on Alicia.

Nothing else.

Certainly not Cynthia.

"Where's Grunsberg?" Ghost Bird asked.

Grace didn't have to think, the way home was almost etched into the back of her eyelids from all the time she had spent imagining taking these very steps. Her arm jerked out, pointing north and a little left.

Ghost Bird tilted her head, eyes unfocusing as though she was looking at something in the far distance, before nodding. "That's on my way," she said. "At least for a while." Then she started walking, her left hand blurring as the skitter-skitter-skitter started back up again, driving back the silence as though nothing else needed to be said.

Maybe it didn't. Grace took a few quick steps to catch up with her before slowing her pace to something more sustainable as the sun slowly rose behind them.

The odd car littered their path. A few looked like they had crashed, but most were parked almost neatly in groups, in something that might almost be patterns, a sort of order that scratched at the back of Grace's eyeballs, that felt like it might almost mean something if only she could see it from the air, or like an insect or ... or *something.*

If Ghost Bird with her not-quite-human intelligence made anything of it, she didn't share any insights with Grace, She was almost thankful for that.

None of the cars worked at any rate, even the intact ones. Two of the cars - two of the more intact crashes - had what looked like the remnants of bodies inside. Grace counted six that seemed to be filled with some kind of green, mossy fungus. But most of them were completely empty, their inhabitants seemingly having left no trace of what happened to them.

Most of the time, Grace focused on the countryside they were passing than the road they were travelling along. The fresh air, untouched by pollution or any kind of man-made chemicals, certainly made it easier to pretend that they were passing through unspoiled land.

But, somehow, she could sense some essential difference to the air of Area X. 

It smelled like the air of change.

It reminded her, a little, of the wind blowing across her face on the roof of Southern Reach, and a conversation with Cynthia.

* * * * *

**Twelve years ago:**

“You’re looking less tense than I’ve grown to expect, given you’re facing the prospect of a weekend away from here,” Cynthia had remarked, a little too casually.

Grace had rolled her eyes, but had been unable to take offence at Cynthia’s fairly blatant fishing, since she was about the only person that Cynthia would allow herself to show that much interest in. “That’s because I’m not going to be spending it at home,” she had said.

“Oh?” Cynthia had asked, drawing the sound out.

“I’ve decided to give canoeing a shot,” she had said. “I’ve finally given in to Alicia’s prompting.”

“I’m glad that you’ve found someone else you can talk to,” Cynthia had said slowly, looking away from her towards Area X.

Grace had joined her, leaning on the wall around the rim of the roof, looking out. Theirs was a very bounded friendship - they didn’t transfer their relationship within the walls of Southern Reach to one outside it. They didn’t invite each other around to their houses or go to bars on trips together. That just wasn’t the ay they worked. They’d learned that lesson years ago. So she hadn’t wanted to add the pressure of her failing marriage to their friendship, but there hadn’t been anyone else. Josh and Beth and the others were all mutual friends of her and her husband, and it had felt even less right talking to them about it. But she’d needed to talk to *someone*, and so Cynthia had taken the brunt.

Well, there hadn’t been anyone else until Alicia. Grace always clearly remembered that Alicia had been the one to phone her, weeks after, when she was almost a fading memory. Alicia always claimed the opposite, that Grace had phoned her after a particularly bad argument with her husband had left her needing to talk to someone, and Cynthia hadn’t been picking up. Grace remembered the incident but refused to believe that she would have made something like that their first phone call.

Regardless, they’d kept in regular contact after that, phone calls sometimes even reaching the daily. Grace had used her to sound off about her marriage woes far too much - Alicia polite enough to let her - and Alicia, in turn, had more than once stressed to her about her office. But Grace had also been interested in hearing about Alicia growing up and working in Panama as well as about the differences between the branches of her company there and in the States. And in return, Alicia was fascinated by what of her history Grace could reveal, even going so far as to teasingly nickname her Jane Bond.

Alicia had been after her to try white water canoeing for some time, and given the prospect of otherwise spending time at home with her husband, she’d finally given in.

There had been a moment of silence on the rooftop as Cynthia and Grace looked into the wind blowing from the direction of Area X. In Grace’s memory, it had smelled of change.

“Thanks,” she had said.

* * * * *

Eventually, they reached a gas station that Ghost Bird seemed happy for them to approach. Vines had crept through the shattered front of the store, covering anywhere that light would fall in a verdant wreath, and had started vinyl expeditions into the back. The wall where the chilled cabinet had been was now a mass of dried fungus.

Something rustled in the dimness at the back of the store, and Grace’s rifle was in her hands and pointed in its direction before she could even think. Ghost Bird calmly walked past her and to the rack which held the maps. The first few were so damaged by damp that they fell apart when she picked them up and the next few were apparently judged inadequate, but she finally spread one she pulled from near the back and waved Grace over.

Still keeping a cautious eye on the gaping wound that had been a door in the back of the store - maybe to a storeroom or something - Grace approached the opened map.

“We’re here,” Ghost Bird said, pointing at a road just north of where Southern Reach had been. “Grunsberg is here,” she continued, tapping on the name, and then returned her finger to their location, before tracing the most direct route to Grunsberg. “I’ll travel with you until we hit junction 35.”

Grace decided not to argue the assumption that she’d want them to stick together. “Where are you headed?” she asked instead.

Ghost Bird smiled serenely and looked through the wall in front of her, gazing at something Grace couldn’t see. “North,” she said simply.

Grace didn’t push, just walked towards a half-collapsed shelf of cans of assorted foods. “These still good?” she asked. The expiration dates would be meaningless, even if she did know what year it was. Ghost Bird came over, picked up a can of hot dogs, sniffed and tossed it to Grace.

“Should be,” she said, and started filling her own backpack with assorted cans, falling into an easy pattern with Grace as they stripped the store of anything useful and salvageable.

It was an easiness that reminded her of Cynthia. She still remembered meeting her for the first time. 

* * * * *

**Twenty three years ago:**

It had been her first day at Southern Reach, and she had already been in an awful mood. The break in her leg had been bad - her doctor had told her that she would have a cast for at least the next three months, and quite possibly six. Which, of course, meant that she had been grounded - here - at an institute that seemed to produce more guesswork and what ifs than useful intelligence.

Her first staff meeting had involved the other department heads, firmly set in the aftermath of the fourth expedition, the first to return with most of its complement intact, the first to return at all since the first expedition. It had been chaos. Every department had been in a flutter - caught between trying to promote their favourite theories about why this one had managed to back it back or about what this new information retrieved from the Area meant and finger pointing at the other departments regarding the past failures. Above them all had loomed the newly enthroned director, apparently making no effort to reign in the chaos.

“The problem is that none of you really have an idea what any of this means,” Grace had snapped after tiring of the internecine strife around her. “You simply don’t have enough data to say one way or the other.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone around the table had looked at her. Then, as one, they united against the common enemy, coming up with objection after argument after criticism.

Maybe not the best way to start her new job, but Grace had enjoyed the cut and thrust, and tried to give as good as she had got.

“I like the way you think,” the director had eventually said, cutting through the noise with her gravelly voice. “Make a proposal about how to fix that problem. Meeting dismissed.”

Judging by the faces around the table, the director’s intervention had won her no friends. But now, at least, Grace had something she could sink her teeth into.

And so she’d come up with the idea of the repeated fifth expeditions, that tried to map out the Area and its reactions in as much a scientific way as she could with as little noise as possible. And she still wasn’t sure if it had been a success, any of it, if it’d done any good at all.

* * * * *

Days passed as they trudged slowly northwards. Sometimes Ghost Bird permitted them to use a building as shelter for the night. Sometimes not. If there was a reason behind her decisions, Ghost Bird wouldn’t reveal them, just looking calmly back at her if she asked *why* as if the answer should be obvious, not even worth commenting on.

Tonight, though, Grace was the one to pull back, something about an apparently ordinary farmhouse making her flesh crawl and her bones feel like they were bubbling. She didn’t know what was in there. She didn’t *want* to know what was in there.

“Not here,” was all she said out loud.

Ghost Bird looked at her closely for a moment, and then shrugged and walked away from the building. 

For some reason, the fact that Ghost Bird didn’t question her about this was the thing that set Grace off, forced her to dig her rough fingernails into her palm as hard as she could. It felt distinctly like Ghost Bird was patronising her, like an adult might regarding a child’s fears, and it felt like the last straw. It made her want to scream and scream until her voice echoed back at her, reminded her that she was here, that she existed, like her actions left a mark in the world.

If Ghost Bird noticed how tense she was, she gave no sign of it. Grace couldn’t decide whether this was a blessing, or just made things worse.

And, naturally, that was the night the weather broke, that rain suddenly poured down out of the sky in almost solid sheets. By the time that Grace woke, she felt like she was being drowned. She somehow managed to stagger to her feet, the ground already slippery with puddling water. Ghost Bird was already up and looking completely calm, even though she resembled a drowned rat. She waited a moment and then gestured to Grace, walking off into the darkness. Grace stumbled along after her, hoping that she had some preternatural sense as to where she was going, because sight wasn’t going to help her.

It seemed to take only the amount of time that she needed to wipe the water from her eyes for Ghost Bird to disappear. Grace tried shouting but doubted that she could be heard over the sound of the downpour. She walked in the direction that she thought Ghost Bird had been going, only for the ground to disappear beneath her feet. It couldn’t have been that far - a ditch or a gully rather than anything more serious - but it was enough. With a sick crunch, she felt her leg break as she landed badly. She tried to get to her feet, but the raw agony made even the rain all but disappear.

As she sank back down - just to gather her strength, just for a moment, the water already forming a stream around her - the thought that at least she wouldn’t have to worry about stumbling across the barrier whilst the rain lasted made her chuckle weakly.

Always the upside. That was Grace, the eternal optimist.

* * * * *

**Thirteen years ago:**

The water in the river that Alicia had taken her to, that first time they’d gone canoeing, had been running much faster than the water that was starting to run past her. She had eyed it sceptically.

“Are you sure about this?” she’d asked Alicia.

Alicia had just grinned at her in a way that had made it impossible for Grace to say no to her. “Positive,” she’d said, then added, “I want to see how far you get before you capsize for the first time.”

“Thanks,” Grace had said sourly but had climbed gingerly into a canoe anyway.

A few hours later after a tuition session followed by her first trip downstream, Grace had been still coming down from the adrenaline high even after she’d gotten out of her canoe.

“Did you see that?” she had demanded, barely able to keep from bouncing on her feet, feeling almost young again.

“I did indeed see that,” Alicia had said, sounding like she was talking about something else entirely, like the way that Grace had rolled not once, but twice, or maybe the way her hair undoubtedly looked at the moment, and generally doing a bad job of concealing how much she had been laughing at Grace.

But the bright amusement in her eyes had just made Alicia all the more beautiful, had just made the sharp feeling that Grace had been suppressing every time they so much as *talked* vibrate all the more keenly, and in a moment of madness she'd later chastise herself for, she had found it impossible to keep herself from stepping forwards and kissing Alicia on the lips.

* * * * *

Grace coughed and spat out the water that had trickled down her nose. That had been… more than a moment. And she could already feel the tug of water flowing past her. She needed to try and get out of here before the water rose any further.

She tried to push herself up and screamed as the movement jogged her leg. She gritted her teeth and refused to let herself fall back.

She had survived this far. She was *not* going to let herself die here.

It was slow, agonising, but she slowly managed to push herself uphill. The rising water even helped by taking some of the pressure off her leg. She thought that she might have even blacked out a few times, but her determination kept her going and, finally, she managed to push herself over the edge of the gully she’d fallen into and flopped back first onto the ground, eyes closed and face upturned into the beating rain and just laid there for a while, breathing heavily and revelling in the fact that she didn’t have to move any further.

At least not for a while.

Of course, she'd been here before. That last mission, deep into if not enemy, then certainly unfriendly territory, and with less than unfriendly enemy combatants.

* * * * *

**Twenty four years ago:**

She'd been there because she'd been the one to spot the patterns in the data that had trickled back to Central, the one who'd needed to be there on the ground so she could tell what it meant because someone else might miss something important.

Because despite the fact that she was an analyst, despite the fact that she had a husband and two beautiful sons, she'd never quite gotten the bug for field work out of her system.

It had all gone well until a patrol had stumbled across them. Halfway through the ensuing firefight, there'd been a flash of pain like white fire, and suddenly her leg was spurting blood and wouldn't support her anymore.

Not that she could have allowed it to matter because the patrol had gotten word back to the encampment, so the mission had become a fighting retreat, and she'd just had to keep moving despite blood loss and a broken leg.

There had been absolutely no way she was going to die out there, and leave her children without a mother.

Her leg had never fully recovered, even after the cast had been removed, and she'd had to grit her teeth many mornings just to get up and walk off the night's stiffness.

In her wildest dreams, she had never guessed that she might actually miss the damn pain. Not until Area X had expanded, and she had woken up one morning after a night on the hard ground, bracing herself for the twinge, and nothing. Her leg had just never been a problem again. Just one more thing Area X had taken from her, one more violation, added to the list.

* * * * *

She must have dozed or lost consciousness for a while because the next thing she knew there was a voice telling her to wake up and something was blocking the rain from falling on her face.

She opened her eyes and blinked a few times before they would focus. “Oh, you,” she said, recognising the face bent over her. “Ghost Bird.”

“Were you expecting someone else?” Ghost Bird’s face was almost as calm as ever, but there was something that might have been concern in her eyes.

Maybe Grace was just imagining that, though. Because Grace’s first response to that question was, ‘Yes, anyone else.’ Because, if she’d given herself room to think about it, she’d have imagined Ghost Bird continuing along her route north to wherever she was headed, not caring enough about Grace’s fate to look for her, maybe even a little relieved.

Apparently not, though. Maybe she was still more human than Grace had thought, and a flash of shame ran through her at the thought that Ghost Bird might be reading her impulses with her heightened senses.

Grace twitched her mouth, tried to make a joke out of it. “Maybe a friendly state trooper…” 

“How badly are you hurt?”

“Can’t you tell?”

Ghost Bird’s shoulder twitched, but she didn’t give any other reaction. Which, honestly, was a bit more than Grace had been expecting.

“My left leg’s broken. Badly, I think. Apart from that, it’s just bumps and bruises as far as I can tell.”

Ghost Bird looked distant for a moment. “You need to get to shelter,” she said and then added. “This is going to hurt.”

It did. It hurt like fire. It hurt like pressing her leg into molten lead, again and again. But she kept on going, kept on moving, because the other choice was giving up, and there was absolutely *no* way she was doing that.

She never had been good at giving up.

* * * * *

**Twenty three years ago:**

The early days at Southern Reach had been their own kind of special agony. Not only had she been grounded, possibly indefinitely, in this black hole of a special project, not only had she pissed off the heads of pretty much every other branch by doing her goddamn job, it felt like she spent half her time going through the same damn arguments again and again, like most of the other heads were physically incapable of taking in new ideas.

She had never given up, though. Never given into despair and started doing her job only perfunctorily as had obviously been expected. Never even really started using the elevators no matter how much taking the stairs hurt because she would have been damned before accepting that she would be an invalid for the rest of her life.

Sometimes, it had felt like the damn building was crushing her in its grasp, squeezing around her like fist until she was reshaped according to its design.

Sometimes, she had felt like she needed to escape, just for a few moments.

Which was how she had found herself up on the roof of the building when she had needed a break. The door might have been kept locked, but she’d at least remembered *some* things from the field.

What she had not been expecting was, this time, to find the director up there ahead of her, seemingly contemplating the horizon.

She had stood there for a moment contemplating her options, as well as giving her leg time to recover from the climb, but before she could turn away, the director had said, “Grace, isn’t it?” still without looking towards her.

“Yes, ma’am,” she had said cautiously, still not certain of the ground she had been treading on.

“Keep up the good work,” the director had said before turning and leaving roof, barely glancing at Grace on the way past.

It had not been the most auspicious of beginnings, and it had been three impromptu encounters before they’d really talked at all, five before the director had told Grace to call her Cynthia. But slowly, slowly, the rooftop had become their shared retreat rather than one they visited individually. Slowly, they had become friends. And slowly Southern Reach had become somewhere she hadn’t just been exiled to but somewhere she had put down roots, become a part of.

* * * * *

Finally, *finally* the endless, tortuous movement was over, and Grace was allowed to sink to the ground in peace, sheltered from the weather. Even if was broad daylight, she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to see anything. As it was, she allowed her eyes to remain closed and tried to ignore the pain as best she could as the rain continued to thunder to the ground nearby.

“I’ve never seen it rain quite like this,” she said. “Not in all the years I’ve been in the area.”

“The rules have changed,” Ghost Bird said absently. “Side effects are to be expected.”

Grace felt steady hands tug at her sodden clothes, and she slapped them away irritably. If anyone was going to remove her clothes - and, intellectually, she knew it wasn’t a terrible idea - it was going to be her.

She opened her eyes and blinked them until they focused before shucking off her coat, top and t-shirt, before pausing at the top of her trousers, gritting her teeth and…

“No need,” Ghost Bird said, stilling her hand with a touch, the simple pressure still a shock to Grace’s system, before quickly retreating and then handing her a dry t-shirt and top from her pack. “I’ll be back in a minute,” she said as she disappeared into the rain-filled darkness.

Grace took a few minutes to struggle into her new clothes, tensing her jaw and powering through every time movement caused a fresh shooting pain from her leg, before finally collapsing back and looking at the ceiling of the overhang she was currently sheltered under. There would have been no way that she’d have spotted this in the rain and the darkness.

Apparently there were benefits to travelling with Ghost Bird.

Grace still wasn’t entirely certain what had prompted her to come back.

The rules are changing, Ghost Bird had said. Laying there, trying to ignore her leg, letting her senses expand in a way that she hadn’t since… since the border expanded, she could almost feel the changes rippling through the air and the earth and every living thing contained within, the black strands that ran through her bones that connected to a greater mycelium, that expanded outwards, ever outwards, twitching and vibrating and…

“Brace yourself,” Ghost Bird said, and Grace jerked back to herself with an almost audible snap. She hadn’t even heard her approaching.

That had never happened before. Whenever she’d even begun to feel disconnected from herself, she’d… followed the biologist’s prescriptions. Hurt herself. Tortured herself to keep the blackness away

The rules had changed indeed, Grace realised with a chill that had nothing to do with her still damp trousers.

She swallowed, opened her mouth, tried to find the words. Not her usual problem, she thought with grim humour. But then, she wasn’t much feeling like herself. “It’s not working,” she said after a moment. “The pain should have kept…” she fumbled for the correct word. The biologist had called it the brightness, but all she could see was a limitless network of black strands, a multi-dimensional fungal network feeding off the body of Earth and other worlds, changing it, bringing new blooms to life. “The change,” she finally settled on.

Ghost Bird looked at her with cool eyes and then nodded. “The rules have changed,” she agreed. “We’ll need to find new ones.”

We, Grace noted. Did that mean that Ghost Bird, too, was under threat from the new situation, or was she just using the word out of whatever passed for sympathy in her mind?

Did it matter? Grace would take any help she could get at the moment.

“Any ideas?” she asked.

Ghost Bird looked down. “At the moment,” she said. “I’m going to try and set your leg as best I can.” She took hold of Grace’s leg in steady hands. “This is going to hurt.”

It did.

And after it was over, and her leg had been splinted, Ghost Bird had gently laid her on the ground and then stretched out next to her, before piling anything that might keep them warm on top of them both.

It wasn’t the swiftly fading pain - far too swiftly to be anything remotely resembling a good sign - that kept Grace awake, in the end. It was the awareness of a body - a female body - next to her, touching her, warming her that was far more troublesome. It had been years since she’d had sex, years since she’d been in close proximity to *anyone*, let alone a woman who might, if she was looked at in the right light, be considered attractive. And her own body was letting her know it.

If breaking her leg should have been good for anything, she thought irritably, it should have been discouraging her libido.

Apparently not.

Well, one good thing about the other person being a alien imitation of someone who had long since left their humanity behind was that there wasn’t much chance of ill-advised sex.

* * * * *

**Thirty nine years ago:**

“It’s prom night,” Leo had whispered in her ear.

“But…” she had said. Leo had clearly been planning this end to the night for some time but apparently hadn’t remembered to bring a condom.

“It’s just once,” he’d said. “It won’t matter. I want to show you how much I love you.”

In retrospect, he’d just sounded horny and desperate, but at the time Grace had been young and confused and curious and she’d had a desperation of her own, the roots of which she hadn’t managed to plumb until years later. “Okay,” she’d said.

It hadn’t been anything to write songs over, but it wasn’t awful either. Though she hadn’t minded that it was relatively quick, all things considered.

Well that’s that, she remembered thinking after it had all been over.

* * * * *

**Eighteen years ago:**

There had been something ridiculous playing on the TV in the background, but Grace hadn’t been paying it the slightest bit of attention, instead preferring to focus on Cynthia, pressed close to her on the sofa, laughing and talking freely, gesturing as expansively as she could, loosened by the wine that both of them had been consuming.

The Grace who had first joined the Southern Reach would never have even guessed this side of Cynthia existed. Even the Grace that had cautiously gotten to know Cynthia on the roof would have had problems.

But now it just seemed natural. Grace had somehow managed to burrow underneath the icy reserve that Cynthia cloaked herself in like a shield, the reserve that had kept everyone else away.

And it was just so much easier to be here, spend time with Cynthia, than to be at home. Ever since the boys had left for college, focused on pre-med the both of them, the house had been so much emptier. And without the focus on their sons, there was nothing to act as lubricant between her and Leo.

If there had ever been love there rather than confusion and teenage hormones, it had ended so long ago that she couldn’t even remember it. And now even respect had been hard to find if they spent too much time together.

So, instead she had spent the time with Cynthia, with someone who had made her feel warm and appreciated and…

And like someone who was worth something outside the damn good job she did at work.

Warm and happy and laughing, she had let her head fall against Cynthia’s shoulder. And looking up, she had suddenly realised how very beautiful Cynthia could be and how it had been a crime that no else as far as she had known had seen this side of her.

Opening her mouth to try and say this, she had somehow found herself kissing Cynthia instead, a situation that quickly escalated with hands and then a lack of clothes and a bed…

It hadn’t been until afterwards that the realisation about what she’d done hit her, and she’d rushed out with barely a word, wondering just how big a mistake she’d made.

* * * * *

**Thirteen years ago:**

The kiss had started something, something neither Grace nor Alicia had been willing or able to stop. Whenever she had a chance to sneak away, a chance to claim that she had been working overnight at Southern Reach, she had spent it with Alicia.

In her more self-reflective moments, she had wondered if her instructors at Central had ever thought that she’d put her tradecraft lessons to these purposes. It wouldn’t have surprised her - secrets could be addictive, and espionage required so many lies and omissions to your partner already - what was one more?

In general, though, she had tried to avoid thinking too much about her… whatever it was with Alicia. Because there was always going to be an expiry date. Alicia was going to move on, find something real. Leo would find out, somehow.

Grace would come to her senses and realise what she had been doing.

Already Cynthia had seemed far too knowing, had pointedly taken to not asking questions about what she had been doing with her free time.

But that very fragility had lent an urgency to what she and Alicia had been doing, a fervour, a passion that Grace had thought had long since passed her by, that she had been far too old for. Clandestine meeting after clandestine meeting, whispered greetings, giggles - *giggles* - that had come far too easily. And the sex - Grace had never experienced anything like it, even when she had been young and stupid.

And she had felt all too young and stupid, especially in the way that, although she had known it couldn’t last, it had felt like it could last forever.

And it had. Until it hadn’t.

* * * * *

Grace woke up with a start as the presence beside her moved. The absence of pressure left a vague ache that she couldn’t quite identify.

Probably something similar to the return of blood to a numb limb, came the acidic thought.

Maybe that was a little unfair, but she was feeling left than charitable this morning. The vivid sex dreams that she’d had last night helped not one jot.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

Ghost Bird, bent over her pack, looked back at Grace with an infuriatingly unruffled expression on her face. “Getting breakfast,” she said.

“Let me guess: cold beans and cold sausage,” Grace snapped.

Ghost Bird tilted her head and looked at her for a moment. Then she rose to her feet, came over to Grace and hugged her, hard.

“What the hell?” Grace shouted, struggling momentarily before stopping as the effort sent shooting pains through her. Not that it would have mattered - beneath her shapeless clothes and general slouch, Ghost Bird seemed to have muscles of iron.

The worst part was that after she let herself relax, she did actually feel better. Less disconnected.

“What the hell?” she repeated, softer this time.

“You needed it,” Ghost Bird whispered in her ear.

“Are you using some kind of…” Power, she wanted to say, but it sounded far too hokey for her to allow the word past her lips.

“No,” Ghost Bird said and then considered. “I don’t think so. But the rules have changed. It’s going to take some time to learn the new set.”

Grace laughed bitterly. “As if we ever managed to learn what the old ones were. It took thirty years, and half of what we knew was guesswork and the rest was superstition,”

“What *you* learned,” Ghost Bird said, and there was something in her face that was almost sympathy as she let her go.

Grace immediately felt bereft again and cursed herself for her stupidity, turning her anger inwards this time. Was she really that desperate for human contact that she’d even yearn for this approximation?

The answer was apparently yes, she was. Which was completely unacceptable.

She huddled over the opened cans Ghost Bird handed her in silence. After they’d finished, Ghost Bird repacked her bag, and Grace struggled around to do the same, ignoring the jagged stabs of pain from her splinted leg.

If Alicia had been here, she’d doubtless have scolded Grace for being unnecessarily stubborn. If Cynthia had been here, she’d probably have ordered Grace to sit down and stay still whilst she took care of things. With limited success, granted, but still.

Ghost Bird was serenely silent, and somehow that cut all the worse.

When Ghost Bird got up, looking like she was ready to leave, Grace pushed herself to her feet, leaning heavily on her good leg and readied herself to follow her as best she could.

Ghost Bird stopped and looked back at her. “I’m going to go and find somewhere we can rest up until your leg is better. You should stay here.”

Grace thought about arguing, but her first attempt at a step resulted in her collapsing to the ground in agony. “Okay,” she said through gritted teeth.

Ghost Bird stayed in place for a moment longer, before nodding to herself and walking off into the distance.

Grace watched her leave and wondered if she’d come back. She had last night, but between that, her usual reserve and the hug, Grace just didn’t have a read on her anymore.

Ghost Bird could do anything. 

Things were changing, indeed.

* * * * *

**Thirty-nine years ago:**

It had been two months since prom night, and she still hadn’t had a period, when she had finally broken down and actually admitted to herself that she might be pregnant.

Might.

She had still hoped against hope that it was something else, anything else. So she had driven out to another town all by herself and bought some tests. Then with shaking hands, she had found a public toilet and tried them, one after another.

Positive. Positive. Positive.

Fuck.

She had burst into tears long enough that a woman had knocked on the door of her stall and asked her what the problem was. She had managed to mumble out something – she still wasn’t completely sure – which had managed to make her go away. She had stumbled out of the toilets and to her car, wanting nothing more than to leave this town far behind.

All the way back, her options had kept running through her mind. Abortion? Adoption?

Keeping it?

The logical option had always been abortion – she had the grades, the offered scholarship and the drive to get out of here – but something in her twisted just contemplating that.

And then she had realised that she didn’t have to make this decision alone. There had been someone else she could lean on, could work this through with.

She’d phoned him up as soon as she’d gotten back, had arranged to meet at their old spot by the river. She had already been there, pacing nervously, when he had turned up.

“Leo,” she had said. “I’m pregnant.”

* * * * *

**Eighteen years ago:**

They hadn’t spoken the next morning, and Grace had noticed looks from some of the other staff. By the time it had gotten to the afternoon, Grace had started to overhear talk, and she’d actually had someone ask her if there had been a crisis they hadn’t been informed about. When she’d asked him what he was talking about, he’d looked a little embarrassed and said he’d noticed that she hadn’t had lunch with the director.

She’d just looked at him for a moment. Granted, she had fallen into the habit of spending lunchtimes with Cynthia unless something had happened that required one or other of their attention, but had spending lunch doing something else *really* become that unusual?

Thinking back on it, though, she had realised it had.

Oh.

It hadn’t been that she hadn’t known that they had become close. It hadn’t even been that she hadn’t known that everyone had been aware that they were good friends. Hell, half the departments had seemed to have an unofficial policy of running anything they sent to Cynthia by her first, just for her impressions.

But still.

She hadn’t realised that they had become this linked in the perception of Southern Reach.

She had dug her nails into her palms until they had hurt and then had walked as calmly as she could to Cynthia’s office. Cynthia had looked up as she had entered, a flicker of something showing in her eyes before she had retreated behind the icy persona she used with everyone else. It had hurt Grace unexpectedly sharply, and the smile she had affixed to her face had dropped.

“Director,” she had said.

Cynthia had twitched, and then had retreated even further if that had been possible. “What can I do for you?” she had asked.

Grace had then spouted something about a minor matter, something she wouldn’t normally have brought before Cynthia. But it had been words, it had been *something*, and now, at least, they had started talking.

* * * * *

**Twelve years ago:**

She’d phoned up Alicia from her car, parked outside her house.

“I can’t do this anymore,” she’d blurted out, tears running down her face as soon as Alicia had picked up.

“Can’t do what, honey?” Alicia had asked slowly, comfortingly.

Grace’s shoulders had relaxed a little, involuntarily, before she hunched them again. “I can’t see you anymore”

“What?” Alicia had said tightly, and Grace had almost heard the fears that she had known Alicia had tried to suppress spring into life. The fears that Alicia had only been a dalliance to Grace, that Grace was always going to return to her husband sooner or later. The fears that Alicia had been deluding herself by ever thinking otherwise.

She remembered considering letting Alicia believe it was just that. She remembered thinking that she should never have started this thing with her at all.

But Grace had started it, and had found that she couldn’t let Alicia go without at least trying to let her know why she was doing this, what Alicia had meant to her.

She always had been stubborn that way.

“Leo knows that I’m seeing someone else,” she had tried. “Apparently he had gotten suspicious and phoned my office when I had told him I was working late.”

“Isn’t this a good thing?”

She closed her eyes. “I can’t do this to my boys. Not have a messy divorce when they’re finishing off med school.” Because she had known Leo well enough to know that he wouldn’t be able to help himself from dragging them - as well as the rest of their families - into this. And she had known herself well enough that she wouldn’t have been able to stop herself from fighting for them once they were in the arena. “This is their whole future,” she had whispered. All they had dreamed about since they were both young.

She’d heard Alicia breathing down the phone for long seconds, obviously trying to gather herself. “So what does that mean for us?” Alicia had asked with an obviously forced note of neutrality.

“It means that unless I give you up, Leo’s going to divorce me. It means that - at best - we’re going to have snatched moments until the boys graduate,” Grace had said, crying now in earnest. “I know I can’t ask you to do this. I know it isn’t fair…”

She had heard Alicia crying herself on the other end. “You’re damn right it isn’t fair.” She had heard a gulped breath from the other end. “I don’t know if I can do this,” she had said. “I’m sorry. I just don’t know.”

Alicia had hung up, and Grace had been left in the car, clutching her phone, feeling like her heart was being ripped out.

* * * * *

Hours passed whilst Grace waited for the rustle that heralded Ghost Bird’s return. Birds, insects and plants had moved in their chaotic, ever-varying dance, and the sun had risen to its zenith and started to fall again. After the last few days - and especially after last night - Grace would have expected to feel drawn out, abraded, the blackness leaching out from her bones to fill the ragged gaps.

But she didn’t, somehow. She felt small and self-contained and like she was an observer of this interconnected web, rather than part of it. A fly buzzing just above the web, not yet enmeshed.

Maybe the pain and damage of the broken leg *was* working, despite Ghost Bird’s doubts. Maybe it had just taken a while to kick in. Maybe something from the outside was pressing in, changing her in a different way.

Maybe, as foreign as the idea generally was to her, she should just lay back and enjoy the day. Because she’d press on north, to Grunsberg, as soon as her leg had healed enough. Maybe a little before, if she knew herself.

Ghost Bird popped into view without warning, seemingly as much a part of the backdrop as a tree or a dragonfly.

“I’ve found somewhere you can stay whilst you recover,” she said.

“How deluxe are we talking here?” Grace asked dryly. Knowing her luck, Ghost Bird had found a cave.

Ghost Bird tilted her head, her expression otherwise remaining constant. “It’s furnished, but there’s no power or running water.”

“Good enough,” Grace said, propping herself up on her arms, and got her good leg underneath her, ignoring both the aches and the sharp flare of pain from her injury. Honestly, she’d have been shocked if Ghost Bird *had* managed to find somewhere with either of those amenities. She managed to get to her feet before Ghost Bird, with an air of gentle reproach, steadied her, draping one arm over her shoulders.

“This way,” she said, guiding Grace in the direction she’d come from.

It was actually a surprisingly short walk to the road, a mere hundred yards or so, and the afternoon sun blazed down on them, warming Grace’s bones. It was still hard for her pride to accept that she needed help to walk, even with a broken leg, but something about Ghost Bird’s quiet presence, her solidity under Grace’s arm, made it easier to accept.

Her solidity reminded Grace of Cynthia. Of course, that wasn’t the only thing about Ghost Bird that did. Her assurance, her intuition about how Area X worked. The way that she led, and Grace found it only too easy to follow. 

At the edge of the road was a small, flat top cart.

“I managed to find this for you,” Ghost Bird said as she lowered Grace onto its back.

“Thanks,” Grace said, and found that she actually meant it. She still had no idea *why* Ghost Bird was so intent on, well, saving her, but she couldn’t help feeling grateful.

The rest of the afternoon passed as Ghost Bird pulled her northwards, ever northwards. They stopped only to pick up some rabbits Grace shot for dinner on the way.

It was calm, peaceful, the sky showing no sign of the violent downpour that had happened only last night, and Grace spent much of the time relaxing, watching the world go slowly by, her mind drifting between Ghost Bird and Cynthia. She couldn’t help wondering if she should be finding the comparisons between them as comforting as she did, or if that was just a sign that she hadn’t learned anything in the past six years.

After all, in the end Cynthia had done nothing but leave her for years now.

* * * * *

**Six years ago:**

Grace had listened to Cynthia’s plan as she had sketched it out on the rooftop - their place - had seen the look in her eyes when she’d talked about a quick visit to Area X, and had known with a sick certainty that there was no way to dissuade her. 

Short of reporting her to Central, which Cynthia must have known she wouldn’t do.

“I know all the procedures,” Cynthia had said. “Hell, I wrote most of them.”

Not the point, Grace had thought, despairingly. Not the point at all. She had wanted to take hold of Cynthia, had wanted to hug her and not let her go. But they didn’t do that anymore, and it wouldn’t have worked anyway.

“I guess I’ll just have to look after the Reach for you while you’re gone,” she had said.

Cynthia had clapped her on the shoulder hard, a rare contact for them, and left her alone on the roof, staring out towards Area X and the tunnel, where Cynthia would soon be going and she couldn’t follow.

* * * * *

The sun was setting by the time that Ghost Bird, seemingly tireless, pulled Grace into Piper and past a sign cheerfully proclaiming 10,016 inhabitants. The only sound was the wind blowing through the streets, no lights were coming on as night approached and nothing moved except the grass, the trees and a few animals. Grace guessed that the population these days was a lot less.

Most of the buildings were still in good condition. Some had plant-life growing up the sides, and slowly dragging them back into nature, or whatever passed for the new version thereof, but most were still standing strong albeit weathered, but not falling down. A few had what Grace at first took to be small statues on the roofs, miniature gargoyles overlooking the town, but on closer inspection through her binoculars, they turned out to be the desiccated corpses of squirrels, squatting like they’d climbed up there to look at something so wondrous, or so horrible, that they’d remained there frozen until they died. Remained there even after they’d died, even after their fur had become wispy remnants over withered skin, even after something akin to green moss had sprouted from their skulls and dead, dead eyes. 

Grace shivered, and wondered what their last thoughts had been.

Not enough information. Too big a dataset. The perennial curse of Area X, now apparently enveloping the world.

For what it was worth, Ghost Bird didn’t show any signs of being bothered by anything. She just pulled the cart down the street, blithely ignoring houses that seemed perfectly habitable to Grace’s eyes,before taking a corner left and finally coming to a stop a few hundred yards further on outside a two story wooden house that at first glance looked very little different than the ones surrounding it - painted in a flaking yellow, the windows were intact if a little dusty, and the roof looked like it was in good shape. Two trees in the front yard, one so strangled by vines that she couldn’t tell what species it was, the other a small oak, leaves an unhealthy yellow and brown. The centre of the yard was dominated by a pond, currently full to overflowing from rain water, green with weeds and buzzing with life.

Inside didn’t seem to be anything remarkable either. A cloud of dust, making her sneeze, rose into the air as Ghost Bird deposited her on the sofa, and nowhere else in the living room seemed much better. The dining table still had plates and cutlery laid out on it, arranged as if a family had been sitting down there when… whatever happened had rolled over this house.

If there were any remnants of the people themselves, they weren’t obvious.

She got up, and limped over to the window. Ghost Bird came after her, but she waved her away with an irritated hand. She was determined to do this much, at least, for herself. Actually opening the window proved difficult - the wood had become warped, and with one bad leg, she couldn’t brace herself properly, but she eventually managed to open it a few inches.

There, she thought with a certain amount of satisfaction as the wind from outside gusted around her, carrying off the dust that had been the family’s final legacy to this house. That should be better.

* * * * *

**Six years ago:**

“What’s wrong?” Alicia had asked quietly when they were in bed.

Grace had thought briefly about pretending to be asleep, but she had seen Alicia’s eyes gleaming in the darkness, which, of course, had meant Alicia had probably seen hers.

“What do you mean?” she had asked instead.

Alicia had huffed and pushed her gently. “I mean that your schedule’s been even more erratic than usual. Sometimes you don’t come home for days. And sometimes you’re working the nearest to the normal eight hours that I’ve ever seen out of you. Not that it matters because even when you’re here, you aren’t, not really. So, what gives?” There had been concern for Grace in her voice, but Grace hadn’t been able to stop worrying that there might have been something else, too.

Grace had rolled over and kissed her, hard, nipping a little at her lips. “You know there’s no one else for me but you, don’t you?”

She had felt Alicia smile against her. “Well, yes,” she had said. “But hearing it again never hurts. So?” she had asked, obviously not willing to let Grace off the hook so easily.

Grace had sighed and had debated with herself about how much she could actually tell Alicia, especially right then when Central’s questions had become more and more insistent. To hell with it, she had finally thought. “A close friend of mine is on a dangerous mission,” she had said. “She’s out of contact, so I guess I’m just kind of caught in a holding pattern at the moment.” Waiting for word to come back that Cynthia’d returned. Wondering if she was actually going to return or if the next expedition would just find scant traces of her and Whitby. 

Then, too, there had been the knowledge that she and Cynthia had been all too closely linked in the eyes of the Reach and possibly Central as well. If, god forbid, Cynthia didn’t return, would she be accepted as Cynthia’s replacement? *Could* she replace Cynthia? Grace had always been the brake on Cynthia’s more wild theories, Scully to Cynthia’s Mulder. She’d grounded Cynthia, but she didn’t have a tenth of Cynthia’s intuition regarding Area X. However faulty that intuition had been, no one could deny that Cynthia had gotten far more information out of Area X than any of her predecessors. More people, too.

Alicia had hugged her hard, interrupting her circling thoughts. “If there’s anything I can do, just let me know,” she’d said. “Would you like me to distract you now?” she’d added with what had sounded like a mischievous smile as she’d stroked one of Grace’s nipples.

Grace had jerked a little and then had pressed into Alicia’s hand. “I could be persuaded,” she said in a throaty tone.

“Good,” Alicia had said softly, kissing her, and Grace had allowed all thoughts of Area X and Cynthia to be thoroughly wiped from her mind, for a while at least.

* * * * *

Time in house felt as if it was stretching like taffy.

Her leg was healing unnaturally quickly, Grace knew. It might only be a few weeks before she didn’t need the makeshift crutch she’d constructed, before she could leave this place and continue on north.

North. It was starting to take on the same surreal lustre as her daydreams regarding Alicia had towards the end of her isolation. The feeling that her target wasn’t so much achievable as something she used to just keep herself moving, to just survive another day.

Ghost Bird became about as much company as Grace would have expected at the start. She started spending less and less time in the house. Sometimes she spent time squatting at the pool that was slowly devouring the lawn. More often she was nowhere to be seen, visiting mostly to drop off supplies and sleep. Even when she was there, Grace more and more felt like she wasn’t, showing less and less affect. Communication, never Ghost Bird’s strong point, became almost absent.

It felt like they were two ships, slowly drifting away from each other into thick sea mist.

Grace probably should have cared more, but she didn’t. She found caring about anything at all harder and harder. It felt like *she* was being stretched out, laminated over the inside of this house that carried the remnants of a family life once lived, the books they once read, the toys they once played with, the photos they had taken in better times. The skin, fallen from their bodies and rendered into dust.

She felt like she was bathing in their absence, the gap they had left behind, the presence that itself became more attenuated every time a door or window was opened and their dust, their mingled dust, blew outside and became part of the greater whole.

Grace was losing her three year battle to maintain herself in the face of Area X, and it didn’t feel anything like what she’d expected.

* * * * *

**Four years ago:**

“You’re doing what?” Grace had asked sharply, turning to look at Cynthia.

Cynthia had obviously preferred to look out in the direction of Area X. “I’m going back,” she had said.

“Because your last visit went so well,” Grace had said with biting sarcasm.

Cynthia had finally turned to look at her. “I’ve got a plan this time. I know what I’m doing and who I need to take.” She had taken hold of one of Grace’s hands. She had probably intended for it to feel comforting, but to Grace it had felt like the grasp of a drowning sailor on driftwood. Like the scramble of a dying rabbit as it was sucked under the tar. “Trust me,” she had said, and this time Grace hadn’t read determination so much as desperation.

But still, Grace had found herself unable to keep from grasping back, offering Cynthia what she had been asking for. “Okay,” she had said. “Have you cleared it with Central this time? I can’t imagine they’ll just allow you into the Tunnel again.” Last time, Grace had covered for her as long as she could, but there had been no way to hide Cynthia’s absence for a month.

Cynthia had given a short, sharp, hard laugh. “Leave Central to me.”

Grace had. She had known for a long time that Grace had her own people at Central, her own masters who she’d done her best to shield Grace from.

Maybe they’d come through for her this time. Maybe she’d be able to offer up enough to make authorising this time worthwhile.

Maybe not, though, and Grace, selfishly, hadn’t been able to help hoping for the latter outcome.

“Promise me you’re coming back,” Grace had said.

Cynthia had given her a long look and then nodded. “I will,” she had said, and Grace had desperately tried to convince herself that she had sounded like she had meant it.

Cynthia had gotten her authorisation and her team, including the biologist, who Cynthia had seemed to build her hopes around. And then they’d all disappeared off into the Tunnel.

A year had passed. She’d done all she could to keep the machinery of Southern Reach moving, to keep it going in the face of its unnatural entropy. And then Cynthia’s team had come back, or at least their dopplegangers had, wiped of personality and affect. Just like the last of the eleventh expeditions.

But Cynthia had not. Grace had clung to that fact, that this had to mean Cynthia was still out there, still carrying out her plan, even as Central appointed a new director, even as he bumbled around the place, obscuring Cynthia’s marks and Cynthia’s way of doing things.

Cynthia would return. She had still believed it, even as no one else had.

* * * * *

At some point Grace’s leg had healed enough that she could walk around on it without too much discomfort. She wasn’t sure exactly when this had happened, and it didn’t seem to matter anyway.

She was ripening, fruiting, letting flakes of skin puff off her like spores.

North had become just a dream which her thoughts occasionally drifted to then danced away from, nothing more.

If Ghost Bird noticed that she was better, she didn’t show any signs of that cognisance. Then again, Grace couldn’t remember the last time they’d talked. They were more like two ghosts who occasionally haunted the same house, only distantly aware of each other.

But maybe her mostly healthy leg explained why, more and more, she was dreaming of the world outside the house. Maybe she was seeing it. Or maybe she was sensing through her spores after they’d landed on an appropriate surface and born fruit of their own.

Either way, she had found herself drifting after Ghost Bird one day as she wandered through streets and yards until she’d ended up in a park. There she came to stop and waited.

It took a few minutes, but first one squirrel found her, bounding over to her and climbing her like she was a tree, then another, and another, until Ghost Bird was almost buried under a small mound of them, still standing still. It took a few moments for her to realise that both Ghost Bird and the squirrels were making sounds, though any significance of that only seemed to come as though from a great distance. 

All the squirrels had green fur on their heads, and there was something about them, something about the way they moved, the way that they reacted that reminded Grace of herself.

They are a we, she realised, just like Grace was a we.

* * * * *

**Three years ago:**

Rain had dribbled down her face as she had stood in the open door, the fire alarm had started ringing, someone had been yelling at her, but it hadn’t mattered.

Nothing had except the fact that she could see Cynthia walking towards her across the courtyard, trailing a verdant mist in her wake.

Hope had burned in Grace for the first time in over a year, and it had been all she could do to restrain herself from jumping in joy.

Cynthia had returned, and this change she had brought with her meant one thing. *Had* to mean one thing.

Her plan had worked.

This *had* to be part of it. It had to be.

It hadn’t been until Cynthia had gotten within a few yards of her and she still hadn’t reacted to Grace in any way that Grace saw the blank look in her eyes for what it was, and the hope in her veins turned to ashes.

Cynthia hadn’t returned. A mockery of a doppleganger created by Area X had.

And Grace had known what she had to do. What she and Cynthia had decided after only shells of the last eleventh expedition had returned, shells who knew their previous lives but didn’t truly *remember*.

She had run to the nearest guard post as the Reach personnel had milled around, disorganised, not knowing what was happening, and snatched up a gun. Sprinting back, she had found the doppleganger about to leave the cafeteria, still trailing a poisonous green behind her.

“You know what you have to do in that case,” she’d remembered Cynthia saying the day before she had left.

She’d aimed between those terribly blank eyes.

“You’ll have to shoot it,” she’d remembered Cynthia saying, how animated her mouth had been, unlike the slackness of her double.

And pulling the trigger, Grace had.

* * * * *

She tried to communicate with the squirrels, skinspores flaking off her body, but they didn’t seem to respond.

She was concentrating on them so hard that the touch took her by surprise, that she didn’t realise what was causing her nerve-strands to dance. Ghost Bird was standing in front of her, a hole in her face - her *mouth* Grace remembered - moving and sounds coming out.

They meant something, she was sure of it. She tangled her hyphae, her fungal strands, with those of Ghost Bird almost automatically, and the shock jangled more thoughts loose from the haze that wasn’t the ever-present now.

“Grace,” she heard amongst the jumble of sound and remembered. Grace is me.

I am an I, she realised.

The shock made her stumble, would have made her fall over if Ghost Bird hadn’t caught her, and something about it - maybe the memory that she had a body - focussed her.

“Ghost Bird,” she tried several times, but the very effort of trying seemed to make it easier, and she eventually managed to get the words out.

“Ghost Bird,” Ghost Bird repeated, and Grace took a few moments to realise what she had meant, an affirmation that the person standing in front of her was, in fact, Ghost Bird.

It felt like she was shrinking, being sucked back inside herself, being made less. For a moment, she equivocated. Did she actually want this? Or did she just want to retreat, to become one with the wind and float away?

But then the word North blazed across her consciousness, carrying with it the echo of remembered determination, which she clung to with all her strength. And with North came Alicia and Josh and Beth and Leo and her sons and flawed, flawed Cynthia, a web of human contacts, friendships and loves that she could attempt to take hold of, wrap herself in and cling to.

Human contact, she reposted to herself, and looked at the way Ghost Bird’s fingers were wrapped around her wrists, anchoring her.

Human contact, she thought as, on instinct, she pressed her lips against Ghost Bird’s. Ghost Bird didn’t react for a moment and then kissed her back, experimentally at first, then with increasing fervour.

Good, she thought, as the strands dragging her outside of her body burned with a verdant flame, as more and more she felt like she was looking out of her own eyes, feeling with her own skin, like she was Grace the person and not Grace a small part of the greater whole.

“Please?” she asked as her hands paused at the bottom of Ghost Bird’s shirt. “I need…”

She *felt* Ghost Bird’s amusement even before she said, “Yes,” and then Grace was ripping Ghost Bird’s clothes off even as she bore to the ground a little less gracefully than she’d like. Ghost Bird’s body was stocky and muscled in a way that made Grace burn nicely with lust, in a way that reminded her she hadn’t had sex in three years, totally separate from the way that she needed the contact to feel human again, but the same too.

Ghost Bird, for her part, seemed to be less wild with desire, and more curious, looking up at her with bright eyes even as Grace did her best to take her apart with her hands and mouth, finally coming with what sounded like a laugh of pure delight.

Grace rolled over, contained within her own skin again, even as she couldn’t help feeling a little disgruntled at Ghost Bird’s reaction. She jerked a little as she felt hands on her, turned to see Ghost Bird looking down at her, thrumming with an energy Grace had never seen in her.

“Please?” Ghost Bird had asked, and Grace couldn’t help giving a laugh of her own.

“Okay,” she said.

* * * * *

**Thirty-nine years ago:**

Leo had gone almost grey with shock.

“Leo,” she’d tried again. “Say something.” Her voice had risen with panic, as she’d started going through the worst case scenarios that her thoughts had been cycling through all the way here.

“What do you want to do?” he’d finally asked, looking like he was half a second away from running all the way back to his car.

“I don’t know,” she’d confessed and then looked up at him half-shyly. “I was hoping that we could talk about it.”

He’d laughed sharply, a release of tension. “Okay,” he had said. “Okay. Talking. I can do talking.” He’d come over to her and had wrapped an arm around her. “What do you want to talk about?”

She’d felt a sudden rush of love for him and burrowed into his arms. “Thank you,” she’d said as she had started to relax because it wasn’t just *her* anymore. “Thank you for this,” she had said.

And just for that moment, it had seemed like everything would be alright from there on out.

* * * * *

**Seventeen years ago:**

Cynthia had come into her office brandishing two bottle of wine. “Let’s go up to the roof and get drunk,” she’d said.

Grace had looked up at her cautiously. Ever since the events of that unfortunate night at Cynthia’s house - even after the tentative rapprochement, even after they’d started spending time on the roof together again - neither of them had even suggested drinking together.

It hadn’t seemed safe.

But right then, looking up at Cynthia’s hopeful eyes, she had felt something inside herself melt. “Sure,” she had said, smiling, shuffling her papers into some kind of order. “Let’s go do that.”

* * * * *

**Eleven years ago:**

Beth and Josh had caught up with Grace in the kitchen. It had been at a party that she and Leo had held - anything to break the suffocating tension that had existed in the house ever since… for several months at that point. Grace had cut back her hours at the Reach in an effort to spend more time at home. There hadn’t been any question about her going out on trips unless Leo also went - ever since the argument that had ended her relationship with Alicia, her husband had guarded her time jealously, no matter how little either of them had actually seemed to enjoy it.

And hence social events. Like this party.

Beth and Josh had exchanged a look. Grace had felt her stomach sink. Beth and Josh only did their double act when they were serious.

“So,” Beth had said.

“We’ve noticed that you’ve been a little down recently,” Josh had continued.

Grace had forced herself to laugh. “Thanks, guys, but it’s nothing, really.” She had shrugged. “Just some issues at work.”

They had exchanged another look. “Right,” Beth had drawled. “That’s good to hear.”

“Because otherwise we might have to suspect it’s that you haven’t been seeing enough of a certain Panamanian recently.”

Grace had felt her throat close up, but she’d shaken her head mutely.

“Look,” Beth had said, leaning in and hugging her. “You know we love both you and Leo. We do. But seeing you with Alicia… it’s the happiest we’ve seen you in years.”

Grace had collapsed against her. “How did you…?”

“You really weren’t that subtle,” Josh had said.

“Trust us,” Beth had added.

“I had to break it off,” Grace had murmured. “Leo suspected, and… I just couldn’t do that to the boys.”

“Well,” Beth had said brightly. “I guess we’ll just have to help you keep things on the down-low until they graduate.”

“Trust us,” Josh had said. “We’re good at this.”

Grace had pulled back and looked at them warily but had decided that it would probably be better not to ask. “If she’s still interested,” she had said. “I wouldn’t blame her if she’s decided that she’s better off never seeing me again.”

Beth and Josh had exchanged another look and then had bent over laughing.

“I think it’s safe to say that she’s still interested in your loser ass, for some reason,” Beth had said.

“Yeah,” Josh had added. “If you think that you’ve been going around looking mournful…”

“Wait,” Grace had said. “Is this..? Did she..?”

“No, she has far too much self respect for that,” Beth had said.

“We just… volunteered our services,” Josh had said. “Just don’t ask what she said when we offered them.”

Looking at the both of them, Grace had begun to smile for the first time in what had seemed like forever. Things had finally started to seem like they could work out.

* * * * *

Dusk was falling as Grace and Ghost Bird approached the bluff overlooking Grunsberg. They walked hand in hand followed by several green headed squirrels. Ever since her recovery, Grace had preferred to be in human contact for as much as possible.

It seemed safer that way.

And, truly, though she would hesitate to call the bond she had with Ghost Bird romantic - and she still had no idea whether Ghost Bird would even recognise the emotion as anything other than one of the biologist’s memories - it nevertheless had a quality and a strength all of its own. And, well, holding her hand was *nice* in addition to the way that Grace felt steadied under the press of skin.

The squirrels were another matter. Ghost Bird had told her that they were a hive mind combining their native nervous systems cross-wired with the aid of the fungus that had seeded itself in their brains and bored its way out through their skulls. She also said that their intelligence was approaching human though from which direction she had so far refused to comment.

If Grace was honest with herself, the most disturbing thing about them was the way that *she* was starting to understand them.

As they crested the top of the hill, as darkness fell around them, as Grunsberg unveiled itself before them, Grace’s breath caught in her throat, and she gripped Ghost Bird’s hand so hard her knuckles greyed.

“Look,” she said, her voice almost choked with wonder and hope.

Look, she thought, as the lights of Grunsberg flickered on beneath them.


End file.
